There was a time when drinking on the job was not only accepted,
it was considered one of the major perks of joining the
workforce.

Crew cut lads fresh from college
would put aside their childish experimentations with wine
and beer, join a respectable company, and start the business
of learning how to belt hard liquor from the seasoned souses
at work. It was a hell of a deal and explains why there
were so few layabouts back then. Why lounge around in a
bar, spending money, when you could get cockeyed on the
clock while dollars rolled into your pocket?

Sadly, those grand days of paid
guzzling have gone the way of the snap-brim fedora. The
nogoodniks, in their undying effort to ensure no one has
any fun at anytime, have made a pariah of the desk bottle.
They have passed laws where it is not only illegal to drink
on the job, it is illegal to drink before you even show
up for work. They have rescued the workplace from being
a place of happy production and joyful camaraderie to a
depressing prison crowded with high-strung nannies and treacherous
snitches.

Which is why the modern working
lush has his work cut out for him. Instead of being a soused
soldier among many others, he must operate as a secret operative
always in peril of discovery and dismissal, continuously
struggling to conceal the accent and mannerisms of his mother
country. He will need every wile and legerdemain in his
possession to pull it off. He must act with confidence.
He must act with cunning. Most of all, he must act in utter
secrecy.

Why Drink
on the Job?
Because most jobs suck. If you love your job, if the workday
just flies by and you have to be dragged away from your desk
at the end of the day, you don’t need alcohol. You
need a psychiatrist. If you dread going to work, if the workday
drags along like a crippled slug crawling across sandpaper,
if clocking out feels like a jail door springing open, then
a little booze can go a long way toward making a nightmarish
death march of a shift seem a hop, skip and sip through a
field of flowers.

You may wonder if you can actually
perform your job while drinking, which is a ridiculous notion.
Jackie Gleason threw together one of the greatest feats
of television history (The Honeymooners) while
fully in the bag. Alfred Hitchcock directed some of the
finest movies ever committed to celluloid in between champagne
breakfasts and gin-soaked lunches. So did Orson Welles.
A prominent biographer estimates that Sir Winston Churchill
spent the entirety of World War Two with a measurable amount
of alcohol in his bloodstream. And if Sir Winston could
survive the Blitz, rally a reeling nation and eventually
whip up on millions of Nazis, surely you can throw together
a spreadsheet by Friday.

The best reason for drinking on
the job arrives with the realization that a quarter
of our adult lives is ritualistically sacrificed to
the cruel tyrant known as Working for a Living. For most
of us, it’s something we have to do, but
would rather not. Drinking, on the other hand, is something
we choose to do, and would like to do more of.
So why not invade that which we don’t like to
do with that we very much like to do? Indeed,
why not have the good times, for once, spill over into the
bad. Eh, sir?

Why an Imbibing
Worker is a Better Worker
Alcohol buoys and brings joy to the psyche. It can lend a
different viewpoint to a difficult business problem. Why
do you think there are thousands of wildly creative cocktail
recipes, but only one recipe for water?

It
cranks up the charisma and represses shyness, which is essential
to any sales job. Ever try to charm the pants off a member
of the opposite sex while stone cold sober?

It makes mundane
tasks seem tolerable, if not downright fun. Tell someone
he has to sit on a stool and stare into space for hours
on end and he’ll hate
you. Tell him beer will be served and he’s you’re
best buddy.

And finally, the
slightly loaded worker is a happy worker, and a happy worker
will always labor longer and harder than a joyless one.
As Canadian journalist Leah McLaren points out: “The real problem
with drinking on the job is that it obliterates the reason
for stopping work at the end of the day—so you can
have a drink—thereby ensuring that if you keep it
up, you will undoubtedly degenerate into a raving workaholic.”

Are You Cut
Out For Juicing on the Job?
It depends largely on your temperament and occupation.
Most people can’t handle it. It takes a sure and steady
hand to maintain the illusion of not drinking while drinking
steadily. You must be a fully functional alcoholic. If you
tend to get giggly, hostile or befuddled after two beers,
you are not going to pull it off. If you are the sort that
prides himself in holding his cups, if your drinking companions
have a hard time telling when you’re loaded, juicing
on the job may well be for you.

That said, if your
job involves a steering wheel, great heights, carrying a
suitcase containing nuclear launch codes, machinery that
may casually remove a limb, or, for the love of God, driving
a bus full of adorable school children, it’s best to find another job. Because
you cannot, in good conscience, drink while working under
those circumstances. For all its benefits, being lit doesn’t
improve your motor skills, depth perception or sense of
balance. The last thing you want to do is kill someone or
lose a hand, because, as Bukowski noted, they have the wrong
kinds of bars in prisons, and it’s nearly impossible
to execute a proper kegstand with only one hand.

The Drinking Professions

Journalists: Hooch is especially adept
in helping one communicate with strangers and making up
fanciful yarns, which explains why journalists hold it in
such high esteem. While not the bastion of round-the-clock
carousing it once was, liquor is still well-entrenched in
the profession. British and Australian newspapermen are
still remarkably unabashed about the habit, and speak about
it with shocking forthrightness. Their Yank cousins prefer
unabashed denial. Nearly every American journalist I’ve met will perform a very elaborate dance around the subject
then, if pressed, confess that he or she doesn’t actually care for
the stuff. I’ve seen enough of them later, in bars, doing a very
different dance, to know they are, almost to the man, extremely deluded
or clever liars.

Clowns: I’ve
never met one who wasn’t a lush. And who can blame
them? Would any of us want to entertain a gang of screaming
brats while in the grips of grey sobriety?

Salesmen: Back when
salesmen were viewed as barely employable con men working
some sort of semi-legal grift, the profession was populated
almost entirely with drunks. In recent years the craft has
attained a vague sense of semi-respectability, and that
damnable respectability brought with it new rules against
drinking. Not that those rules are necessarily followed.

CEOs: The
best drinking positions are those that require little supervision
and don’t require you deliver tangible results. Which
is why the CEO’s office is one the last great citadels
of workaday lushing. According to one study, the higher
you climb, the more likely you’re going to drink on
the job: Twenty-three percent of managers are estimated
to juice on the clock, compared to eleven percent of supervisors
and eight percent of hourly workers. Every CEO and military
officer I have ever worked for (aside from an overwhelmed
Mormon gentleman who would engage in monthly nervous breakdowns)
was obviously or strongly rumored to be a lush. And why
not? Sitting around not doing much at all can make a man
surprisingly thirsty.

Law Enforcement: An
estimated 25% of police officers are thought to be alcoholics.
Why? Well, there’s the stress, the long hours, the
siege mentality, and the fact that they have little fear
of getting arrested for drinking-related crimes.

Service Industry Workers: This
includes cooks, chefs, bartenders, DJs, wait staff, bouncers,
strippers and those that support and lead them. It’s
nearly impossible to work in the midst of all that booze
and not drink. In fact, you should look with keen
suspicion upon any who do not drink: If they disdain the
product they’re pushing, they most likely view you
with equal disdain.

Graveyard Shifters: The
overnight shift is a natural habitat for drunks. First,
it tends to draw night owls (and we know what sort of people
they are), there is usually little or no supervision (when
the cat is snoozing, the mice are boozing), and those long,
horrific and unnatural hours of ennui will drive even a
parson to the bottle.

College Professors: They
drink for the same reasons as clowns do, the only differences
being they are protected by tenure and the screeching children
tend to be older, if not better behaved.

Construction Workers: Despite
the inherent dangers, shrill investigative reporters routinely
catch these men getting hammered at lunch then jumping behind
the controls of fifteen-ton cranes. If you ever wanted to
gaze upon a monument to on-the-job drinking, stick your
head out the nearest window and take a gander at your city’s
skyline.

Lawyers: Lawyers
will tell you they drink because they have to assume the
most horrible problems and crises of others. Others will
say they drink because they are in league with the devil,
and by association, demon rum. I say they are superior drunks,
if not the best tippers.

You can lump in with the above any
job involving intense stress, swaggering machismo, true
camaraderie and odd hours.

Introducing Booze to Your Current Workplace
Enlisting alcohol to the task of bringing joy and purpose
to your current toil is a tricky proposition at best. Your
newfound jolliness will be viewed with intense suspicion
by your workmates and superiors. They will think 1) You have
finally turned the bend and will murder everyone in the office
on Friday, 2) You have come out of the closet, and 3) You
are juicing on the job. While the first two will earn you
a certain amount of deference, the third will secure you
only disdain and possibly a pink slip.

You have to either work the booze
in very gradually, increasing your intake day by day, or
coincide your juicing with a flagrant lifestyle change that
would explain bizarre behavior, such as gaining religion
or embarking on a new diet/exercise program. (See The
Holy Roller Ruse and the Health Kook Con below).

Bringing Booze into a New
Workplace
If you are starting a new job, you are in a far superior
position. Since your new coworkers don’t know you personally,
they will assume your workplace elation an extension of your
natural personality. In fact, you may wish to have a few
drinks before your first interview. It’s a hell of
a relaxer, it makes you appear more confident and competent
than you actually are and, if the interviewer is any sort
of drinker at all, will create a subconscious bond between
you.

Cunning Disguises
The best way of disguising your drinking is assuming a persona
that will either explain or mask, your behavior. They are:

The Health Kook Con
This is especially effective if your company has a shower
on the premises. Ask if you can shower and change into
your work clothes when you arrive because you like to workout
before coming to work. Those obsessed with Health and Fitness
are rarely thought to be the sort who would drink on the
job. You drag in looking bedraggled and wearing sweats
and they’ll assume you just finished a run or pumped
iron, when in fact you’re very badly hungover. Word
to the wise: Just because you’re wearing the gear,
don’t give in to the urge to actually exercise. You’ll
end up smelling like a distillery. Instead simulate sweat
by squirting water from your omnipresent sports bottle
onto your face. The rest of the day you can blame your
unnatural dehydration, shaking hands and cold sweats on
the morning’s
“monster session.” It also gives you the right
to drink lots of sports drinks (bolstered with vodka) and
protein shakes (milk, protein powder, coffee liqueur and
Baileys).

The High on Life Hoax
Behave as that aggressively pleasant workmate you have often
encountered and always loathed. Always appear upbeat (which
won’t be hard since you’re going to be drunk),
walk around very quickly with a jaunty bounce in your step
and a boisterous smile on your face. Busy your cubicle
with all sorts of happy pictures and knickknacks, keep
a vase of flowers on your desk. Breeze through the workday
with nary a care nor worry. You don’t need alcohol
to be happy, by gosh, you’re high on life! Just never
let on you’re happy because you’re hooched
up.

The Sickling Strategy
This ruse is especially effective if you happen to be on
the thin side. Let on early that you are suffering from
a long term illness (never mention the malady by name,
as this will restrict your range of symptoms) yet bravely
go to work anyway. When you come in haggard and hungover,
they will think you’re having a relapse. Hint that
you may be contagious, so your coworkers will keep their
distance. If they try to delve into the exact nature of
your illness, start coughing violently until they creep
away. Decorate your desk with a myriad of prescription
pill bottles (you can load them with vitamins and ibuprofen).
Keep your liquor in family-sized cough syrup bottles (some
Italian liqueurs and cherry schnapps are surprising difficult
to differentiate from actual cough medicine). There lies
the true brilliance of the Sickling Strategy: You may chug
liquor right in front of your coworkers.

The Holy Roller Ruse
This is an example of the Big Lie. The trick behind this
ploy is to create such an uptight façade that none
will think you capable of enjoying a light beer after work,
never mind sneaking shots of vodka on job. Prominently
display a Bible on your desk, or better yet, The Book of
Mormon. A framed picture of the Savior might be in order.
Routinely wear a bowtie. Strongly condemn alcohol at the
least opportunity. If a coworker appears hungover, attempt
to slip a religious tract in his hand. If you think this
ploy doesn’t sound like fun, you are gravely mistaken.
There is nothing more entertaining than lecturing some
poor weekend drinker about the evils of beer while three
belts of hard liquor are coursing through your veins. It’s
no wonder many of the great fire-and-brimstone preachers
of yore were secret drunks.

Understand, however,
that the sheer power of this façade is also its weakness.
There is no flexibility whatsoever. You need only be seen
staggering out of a bar once by a coworker and the entire
gig is up.

Tipples of
the Trade
Heavy dilution is the key. It not only buries the tell-tale
scent, it forces you to pace yourself and not get obviously
loaded. A good pour of vodka or neutral spirits diluted into
a large bottle of designer water, with a squeeze of lime
for taste, is an excellent choice of workaday cocktail. It
is nearly odorless and appears completely guileless. The
volume of water will force you to pace your intake and keep
you properly hydrated. Spicy V-8 and grapefruit juice are
also superior scent-maskers. Milk-based cocktails, such as
the White Russian, are nearly odorless, and are a pleasant
alternative. Spearmint schnapps can be utilized, but only
if you make a big show of constantly shooting Binaca Breath
Spray into your mouth.

Avoid the brown liquors, as they
tend to be the most heavily scented. Also eschew carbonated
drinks (beer and some cocktails) because they induce burping,
which will shove the scent of alcohol into the nose of anyone
within five feet.

The Basics of Sneaking
Booze
The bottle in the desk is an archaic relic that belongs to
another time. As romantic a prop as it is, it is much too
hard to hide and very difficult to explain away. As far as
job retention goes, alcohol is a weapon of mass destruction.
And as such, must be very cleverly disguised.

Always premix your drinks
before work. The only people who mix liquids in
the workplace are chemists and drunks. And they know you
ain’t no chemist.

Keep your hooch in contradicting
containers. Refillable plastic coffee-chain mugs
are excellent subterfuge. When someone sees the word coffee
on a container, he will subconsciously assume it contains
coffee. Sports bottles are also effective, especially those
with built-in straws. Using the straw to deliver the hooch
to the back of your throat will minimize booze breath.
Stemware and highball glasses are best avoided.

Old school colognes such
as Old Spice and English Leather are excellent for masking
the smell of alcohol. They are so effective it
makes me suspect they were created by our hard-drinking
great-grandfathers expressly for that purpose.

Inject citrus fruit with
vodka. Using a medical syringe, inject vodka through
the skin and into the pulp of an orange or grapefruit.
Take your time and don’t inject too much in one spot
or you’ll create a pocket of liquor. If you begin
peeling a fruit and a coworker starts eyeing your treat
with a look of hunger, accidentally sneeze directly onto
the fruit. If someone does detect the scent of alcohol,
make a face, announce the fruit has gone sour and throw
it away.

Don’t
overdo it. Remember,
you are trying to attain then maintain a pleasant time-killing
buzz, not get wildly hammered. Set your alcohol thermostat
to a comfortable glow and coast to the end of your shift.

Interacting With Coworkers
Alcohol is a wonderful thing. It inspires generosity, goodwill
and camaraderie. While at work you must ruthlessly suppress
all three of these fine emotions.

Become a good listener. Speaking is the most dangerous thing a working lush can
do. It’s
impossible to slur if you keep your mouth shut. If you have
to speak, speak in short, flat monosyllables. It’s
when you try to utter an entire sentence that the ends of
words get rolled together. Close talking is occupational
suicide, let it be known early on that you are one of those
people who are touchy about their personal space.

Choose your words carefully. Yep is
a prime word for the working lush. It doesn’t involve
any slurry sibilants and its only pesky, easy-to-drop vowel
is held prisoner between two rugged consonants. The “p” ensures
you finish with your mouth closed, barring any booze breath
from punctuating your utterance. It also possesses a certain
casual finality, for example:

“Hey, Jack!
Are you working hard or hardly working?”“Yep.”
“So you’re—““Yep.”
“I’m going to go back to my cubicle now.”“Yep.”

It may well happen that you will
get fully hammered at work, unintentionally or otherwise.
If this happens, first you have to stop drinking. Fight
the natural gregarious urge and attempt to isolate yourself.
Spend an hour in the copy room. Attach yourself to your
keyboard with an aggravated look on your face while typing
furiously. If you must parlay with your workmates, wipe
the silly grin off your face and assume the stern mien of
a prison warden. Your eyes are the first giveaway, they
will begin to close and blur, so force them open wider than
what feels natural. Recognize that you most likely appear
much drunker than you imagine. Remember when you were in
the bar, thinking you were coming off cool and collective
and the bartender cut you off? Same deal.

Using Company
Parties to Your Advantage
Company parties are wonderful opportunities for the working
lush. Not because you can get loaded, quite the contrary.
You must stay sober. For two reasons. First, it
will make you appear completely resistant to the charms of
alcohol, and, much more importantly, it will supply you with
enough moral ammunition to last you until the next company
booze up.

Company parties are an elaborate
form of Mexican Standoff. Because nearly everyone (especially
the amateur drunks) behaves badly, there is a mutual understanding
that whatever sordidness takes place will not be spoke of
again. Which is why you must remain sober and absorb every
filthy detail.

Those details are solid gold bullets
and must be used in an extremely judicious fashion. Never
breathe a word of what transpired until someone mentions
ill of your drinking habits. Then let them have a full broadside
of rancor.

Say you happen to
crawl into work looking a little worse for the wear and
Sally quips, “What’d
you do, Jack, fall into a vat of vodka?” Before the
last flippant syllable falls out of her mouth, return fire
with: “Oh, I had a few, but not enough to make me
stick my tongue down the throat of Herb, that married sleazebag
from accounting.” Sally will absorb a very cruel and
powerful lesson.

Once they make the Pavlovian connection
that pairing your name with alcohol will result in a devastating
volley of embarrassing memories, they are likely to avoid
the subject altogether.

Dealing with Other
Drunks
You will encounter two types of fellow drinkers in the workplace.
First, there are the amateurs, the weekend warriors. Avoid
them like the plague. View them as a hardcore revolutionary
views semi-radicalized college students who occasionally
attend sit-ins and protest marches. You are a highly seasoned
professional committed to the cause while they are half-hearted
dilettantes who are very likely to crack under pressure.

They will confide how drunk they
got last night, how hungover they are that morning. They
will try to draw drinking stories out of you; they will
attempt to penetrate your elaborate disguise. And once you
start talking, they will repeat what you say, and soon you
will have a reputation of a secret drinker. And you know
what secret drinkers do? They drink on the job.

The second and much
rarer stripe of drinker is your peer, the fully functional
alcoholic. Do not use any heavy-handed reversal tactics
on this cat, she will probably have sniffed you out for
what you are the moment she met you. If she is content to
carry out her mission solo, leave her to it. If, however,
she doesn’t
seem adverse to some company, consider combining forces.

Should You
Find a Coconspirator
Tippling in tandem with another functional drunk can be
a thing of breathtaking beauty. There are many advantages.
You can cover for each other. If one of you drags in late,
the other can clock you in, physically of figuratively:
“Oh, Jack’s here, he just ducked down to accounting
to square up some numbers on the Anderson account.” They
can squash rumors in your absence: “Can you blame him
for smelling like bourbon yesterday? His grandmother, she
practically raised him, passed the night before. What would
you do?” You can gang up on the suspicious, you can
share intelligence and techniques, and you can share booze.

You may even develop
a vocabulary of secret words to communicate with your comrade.
Here’s
an example of an encoded conversation:

“How’s
that efficiency report coming along?”“All done. But I have a bear of a spreadsheet
to wade through.
”
“Need some help?”“I could use a hand.”
“Happy to help. You going to the gym at lunch?”“Oh, I’ve got a hell of a workout planned.”
“Just make sure you shower afterwards. Last time you smelled like a locker
room.”“I’ll take an extra long shower.”

What was really said:
“You have any schnapps on hand?” Efficiency=Germans=schnapps.“Finished it up. But I have some vodka.” Bear=Russia= vodka.
“Can I have a taste?”“Let’s have one together.”
“Fantastic. You going to the bar for lunch?” Gym=Jim Beam=bar.
“Oh, I’m going to knock some back.”
“Makes sure you don’t come back smelling like you’ve been
making out with Jack and Jim.”“I’ll splash on some extra Old Spice.”

Just don’t get too verbose
and clever, or you’ll arouse suspicions. Even teetotaling
Mormons in deepest Utah are aware subcultures like to toss
around a lot of slang. Get too cutesy and they’ll
know you’re up to something.

Boozing
With the Big Guy
As I’ve said, CEOs tend to be drinkers. The fact
that the privilege of drinking on the job rarely trickles
down to the rank and file should not surprise you. To
reach the position of CEO you have to be possessed of
the idea that you are somehow better than the rest, and
thus can enjoy the privilege of reveling in sins you would
condemn in underlings. A prominent example being those
millionaire evangelists who are routinely caught in motels
liquored up and bedded down with prostitutes.

In the old days,
being invited to the boss’
office for a belt of bourbon was considered a sure harbinger
of good tidings. It meant the Big Guy thought you were a
square joe, wanted to know what you had to say, and you could
rest assured he was grooming you for promotion.

Nowadays the rules
have utterly changed. Instead of pat on the back, the gesture
may well be a probe, or worse, a trap. Here’s how
it may go down:

You’ve been summoned to the
boss’s office and, after offering you a seat, he asks
if you’d care for a drink.

Choke down the urge
to holler, “Goddamn
right I do, sir!”

Instead say, “If you’re
having one, I will.”

Don’t get tricked into thinking
that, since the boss offered, it is perfectly all right
to drink in front of him. Treat him as a weirdly smiling
cop who walks up to you and says, “Hey, why don’t
you pick my pocket?” Me, I would leave his wallet
where it was. If the boss isn’t having one, then neither
should you. If he does pour himself a drink, then, as a
rule, you must have one too. To refuse is to appear a prude,
communist, or too good to drink with him.

No matter how good
the scotch is, and it’s probably going to be top shelf, don’t
gulp it down. Drink a little slower than he does. Let him
finish first. Then, if he offers you a second drink, respectfully
decline.

On the other hand,
if he makes the offer at Hooter’s or one of those fancy pseudo-Irish
pubs CEO’s are drawn to, indulge. You’re off
the clock. Just don’t get loaded with him. I know
bonding over beers with the Big Wig seems like a grand idea,
but nine times out of ten it isn’t. Why? Because one
of two things are likely to happen: You’ll get drunk
and display or confess an unnatural fondness for alcohol,
or two, he will, when he sobers up, come to deeply regret
the fact he revealed his secret to a lowly employee. He
will feel uncomfortable around you and your head full of
ugly secrets and instead of promoting you, he will more
likely make you go away.

Always expect a
trap. True story: After a year at sales job, my boss summoned
me to his office and offered me a drink. I knew he liked
a taste (he had a fully-stocked liquor cabinet to the right
of his desk) and I immediately agreed. He asked me general
questions about my sales route, then asked if I needed a
refill. Of course I did. Then, during my third scotch rocks,
I realized with a black dread that he was not drinking.
It was right about then he started asking me about bars
that were in my sales territory and I knew I’d fallen
into a trap. I knew about those bars very well because I
spent about a third of my on-the-clock, out-of-office time
happily ensconced inside them.

He offered a fourth
and, fully aware I’d crossed the rummy Rubicon, I
accepted. The way I figured it, the axe was already falling
and I was collecting the closest thing I would get to a
severance check. A week later I was let go.

Which brings up
a point. I was not fired for a lack of performance. While
I was not the hottest salesman on the street, I was in the
upper thirty percentile. Though I am a naturally shy gentleman,
I outsold teetotalers right and left because I used my frequent
stops at the bars to keep me loose and sociable. My mistake
was I had miscalculated; I didn’t put a lot of effort
in hiding my tracks because I assumed my performance good
enough to make my superiors look the other way. Which brings
up the next section.

When You
Are Discovered
And you will be. Now, we’ve all heard stories of shocked
relatives uncovering vast stores of bottles in various stages
of distress in the basements and hidden cupboards of recently
deceased grandmothers whom they thought utterly teetotal.
Thing is, granny could pick and choose her social interactions
(“Don’t come over today, dear, I’m playing
bridge with the girls.”). She didn’t have a gang
of coworkers snooping around and her household chores weren’t
measured by efficiency reports.

Accept the fact
that sooner or later you will be found out. Hopefully by
that time you’ll
have made yourself indispensable and they will look the
other way. This is called reaching the Churchill Stage.
This is that glorious state when you have made yourself
appear (it doesn’t have to be true) so invaluable
that you can walk around the office with a bottle of bourbon
hanging from of your hand and no one will breathe a word.
It’s been know to happen. Sir Winston pulled it off.
So did Bogart, Gleason, FDR and JFK. Most of the veteran
newspaper reporters and columnists of yore reclined in that
exalted state of grace.

If you, like I, discover that you
are not of great value to the company, the battle is not
yet over. Most states have identified alcoholism as a disease,
and you cannot be legally fired for being under its dire
influence. So play it up. Start sobbing uncontrollably and
throw yourself at your accuser’s feet. Launch into
a hysterical diatribe, such as: “You’re right!
I’m a diseased person! Help me! Help me help
myself! Do you hear me? Diseased, damn you! And according
to current state employment laws, you must send me to paid
alcohol counseling. And I thank you.”

You may then pick yourself up, dust
yourself off, and take the rest of the day off. You can
look forward to a month of long boring sessions with an
alcohol counselor and/or recovery group which will make
for great stories at the bar later. Once caveat: Larger
companies might take in upon themselves to ship you off
to a full-bore, locked-down rehab clinic. In that case you
might think about finding another job, because, believe
you me, booze is very expensive in those places, and sneaking
drinks within those walls will make your workaday hooching
seem child's play.